Of Being Transparent

A particularly low tide at sunset makes for fabulous light.

CF

It sure does. That bird could go hang with flamingos at that moment.
As far as a critique goes I think you've done a pretty good job controlling the bg immediately behind the bird which isolates it well. The fg, however I think could be shortened by an even higher stance from you - meaning putting the camera higher than it was. You'd still have a good immediate bg for the bird, but the fg would be more even with water being the prominent part. The rock just doesn't to it for me. But that's assuming you had time to manage all that, if you didn't this is pretty good.

Iguanamom,

I agree with you regarding the foreground. But, as you suggest, one must work with what one is given and the moment this shot was taken, I had to take what there was. I have other shots with a full reflection of the bird, but the overall shot is not as strong as this.

Thanks for the comments, however.

David

Nice light

I agree you have to take the shot as is , birds tend not to be very good models, and make us wait ... some time they cooperate, sometimes not.

Armando,

Thanks for the comments. Much appreciated. I rather thought the rocks in the foreground gave the shot perspective, scale. I guess another shot could have had full depth of field with the foreground in focus also. But, that was not the "angle" I was going for. The bird is the focus.

Thanks again.

CF

I'm always outside the box, I love the photo as is, the "glow" of the bird is fantastic. If i have to pick out something, I would show less of the water on the background, not take is all out just a tad less. Very small nitpick, I would frame it!

Lori,

Thanks very much for the comments/suggestion.

CF

Beautiful shot, CF. Perhaps cropping out the oof fg and half the water in the bg would be the better option. IMO a higher angle on the subject would result in a less impressive image. Great capture!

ksbryan0:

Thanks so much for leaving me your thoughts. Much appreciated.

CF

CF - Definitely crop out that out-of-focus foreground. Whether you should crop off more of the sides is TBD but it probably wouldn't hurt. Normal light? To me, I can't see it being this purple/pink, but stranger things have happened :D Good capture, great timing of him/her flappin' her wings.

G

Thanks GB. I appreciate you leaving your thoughts. As for the light, you might remember we had a series of days where the sunsets were absolutely spectacular. The sky looked like a magnificent fire, then became brilliant purple, violet, then indigo blue. One those afternoons we also had a particularly low tide. The light, the tide pools, all there for the taking. Thanks again.

I like this picture and think the foreground needs to stay. If anything I would remove about half of the sky, Jeff

Holy cow, what an awesome, beautiful shot!! Very well done, and that blurred foreground doesn't bother me one bit. The subject is strong enough to hold the viewer and the little bit of foreground actually helps give the shot some depth.

Great job, thanks for sharing! I'll remember this one throughout the rest of my day.

Grandpa/Danbailey:

Thanks so much for taking the time to leave your comments. I so enjoy receiving or reading the various comments by our fellow members as they range from one extreme to the other. It was my intention by including a blurred foreground to provide depth to the shot without distracting from the subject. Otherwise, how far off into infinity does this water go? How big is it? How deep is it? What does it have to do with the bird itself? Without the foreground I think the shot suffers. The amount of sky, actually the ocean beyond, I'll give you that; it could be cropped.

Again, thanks so much for your comments.

David